If it wasn’t for the word hope this would be a dreary world for the fellow who plans and builds in the future. It rises and falls in every human breast. Some have an over abundance, and others lack in not having enough. It arouses buoyancy and encouragement to see one who reaches toward hope and almost succeeds but doesn’t get quite a firm enough grip to fasten the goal securely before he has to let go; but no matter how hard the fall, or how often, he’s up and trying again. Discouragement or complete failure never causes a faltering step or gets time to fester with despondency before keener activity revives the energy and the shattered hope is rehabilitated and again swells the breast so full there is nothing to do but try again. Bless the hopeful man or woman. Some can’t stand the fall, they go down clear to the bottom. Defeat and despondency chain them fast.

In the year 1896 when Bryan was preparing his famous oration “The Crown of Gold” that was so ably delivered and well received and which was the leading factor in opening up the road for him to the White House, I commenced scheming and planning on patentable ideas. Nineteen years of hard thinking has brought no visible financial returns and so far the patent attorney is the only one who has received toll. I never entered the field thinking I had any latent ingenuity like Edison, Westinghouse, Ford and many others; but I had hopes, as long as I could pay the attorney and the filing fee of the patent office.

My first application for a patent was an adjustable track wrench that met complete failure after a year’s pendency. I thought I had a good, practical, economical, and convenient wrench, but after the said period of time elapsed my attorney informed me it was rejected by the chief examiner on account of prior similar claims already patented. Of course you must not get confused and wonder why he didn’t tell me this before I filed the application. If he had the self-explanatory portion of the scheme loses its self respect and puts the attorney in a bad financial light, which I would dislike to do. However, the discouraging news was so cool and saddening at this first attempt that it froze my ingenuity a decade and a quarter, and then hope rose again and I called once more on the dormant faculty and changed attorneys.

After due diligence had persevered and I had stood the condemnation of my wife, who said I was getting absent-minded and hard of hearing, I sent in my application duly witnessed and sworn to, along with the necessary stipend that makes the wheels buzz in the attorney’s head and swells that seven millions of profit accrued in the patent office from a good many fellows like myself. Nice to help swell this big profit for some day when this accumulation becomes large enough our wise custodians of this fund may transfer it like ordinary Town Council men do when one fund gets too far ahead and pay off the national debt. My second application was an improved index and a device of meritable convenience over present ones, so I thought. It has been pending two years after failing ten times before the chief examiner, who doesn’t seem to have the courtesy to allow it.

While the invention was safe and secure in the government vault, I was rash enough to go into another irrational period and get out a computing device for the busy coal man to aid him in rapid accurate calculations and do away with the old time method of having coal swell so sixteen hundred pounds was a ton; not really a long ton but a short ton. This wonderful invention hatched in the brain of an ordinary man, lingered in Washington one year and a half, and was then rejected. I wouldn’t care for having it rejected, but I’d like to have the rejectors use a milder word, one that doesn’t rankle so much and stir up the mean things in you.

Well, here are two great inventions for the betterment of the race denied, and from the way the attorney wrote in his last tribute of love to me, the third is hanging over the precipice and is ready to fall among its ancestors.

I had hopes when I invested in the last two ideas, my total expenditures, including postage on a voluminous amount of correspondence, was $141.28, and this is how I disbursed the interest on that amount:—I calculated conservatively that the two inventions would net me $50,000. Here she goes! To my father-in-law, for giving away his daughter to me, for which I have never paid, $1,000.00; to two sisters-in-law that favored my suit, $1,000.00 each; to a brother-in-law that did the square thing by me, $1,000.00; to my oldest brother, who continually hammered me when I was young and smaller than he, $1,000.00; to a younger brother, whom I could hammer, $1,000.00; to my four sisters, $1,000.00 each. Ten thousand of the iron men at work. The next $20,000 I put at interest in Colorado, where it is easy to get a ten per cent rate. This would bring me in $2,000.00 a year to live on, and by being frugal I might be able to smoke a five cent cigar occasionally and let the corn cob pipe have a chance to dry up some of its nicotine. The next $10,000 went to old people who have nearly reached the summit of their lives, but on account of the feebleness of their limbs, poor eyesight and a meagre pocketbook, the final ascent overtaxes their small reserve of strength and with want and sacrifice being in the majority they can’t quite make it. To these aged and needy people I would give $500.00 cash. This amount would render their last days comfortable, free from worry and care. That helps twenty old couples, forty people that are worthy and needy. The remaining $10,000 goes from my pocket in ready cash to people met every day, people whose countenances have rigidly printed thereon a silent appeal for sympathy and help. A meal to the man suffering from the pangs of hunger; $50.00 to a woman making her living over a washboard and fighting a losing fight against poverty to rear her brood; $100.00 for a present and a Christmas tree to poor little children who never have the pleasure of unwrapping a doll or any kind of a toy; $5.00 to a laboring man looking for work; $10.00 on a subscription list to help a poor widow bury her boy; $25.00 to the man in the pulpit preaching straight from the shoulder; $10.00 for a railroad ticket to take a girl home who expected work in the city but didn’t find it. And so goes the remaining $10,000, here a little and there a little. I think I could gladden more hearts with this last $10,000 than the great man who spent millions in libraries and free reading rooms throughout the country. With all due respect to him, the man in overalls and the girl who must work are the ones who need literature the worst, but the struggle for existence is so keen they haven’t time to read books and they feel humiliated and unwelcome in their everyday garb mingling with the better dressed people. The well-groomed man and woman of today, in a large sense, doesn’t apply any too closely the ethics of the Galilean and would rather not mingle with the less fortunate people, so the conclusive thesis is there is no congeniality between the two and the primary object of helping the fellow who needed it most is a failure. But alas, the $50,000 is still behind the capitalist and must wait for hope to rise again.

Not feeling satisfied but that there was plenty of loose coin waiting to flow to me, I took up the pleasant but unprofitable part avocation of composing songs. I had a Washington music firm write the music, copyright the songs in my name, do the advertising, and remit one-half the proceeds to me semi-annually January 31st and July 31st. I was very careful to set out specifically the remitting part in our contract. Each song had its own peculiarity and sentiment to touch the public pulse, which so far has been untouchable. The first song, “A Tear Drop Always Glistened in His Eye,” was to fasten itself on the hearts of the people like “Annie Laurie.” “When the Silver Moon Light Sparkles on the Lake” made its bow to the public; I hoped lovers with emotion would go wild over it and would know a good thing when they heard it. If they had such a feeling the emoluments failed to show it. The third song, “Anna, My Anna,” was short and jerky for the happy-go-lucky class of people that fell so in love with “Casey Jones.” But it seems this class wouldn’t respond either, and leaves me with the entire stock on hand with an expenditure of $90.00 trying to get the people to sing. I find them more unresponsive than the preacher when he says let everybody sing, and a few who gave their best years in the Lord’s service lift up their cracked voices in earnest endeavor to lead the sheep, and the sheep, lambs and all go astray. My share of the profits has been ten one cent postage stamps, just the ordinary kind, the common kind you can get from every postoffice in the country. And the trio which failed to receive public recognition I laid away where moths and rust doth not decrease their earning power and neither do thieves molest them. Three more hopes decently but sadly buried.

There is also intertwined and resting sweetly in slumberland 175 shares of Cracker Engle Gold Mine Stock at twenty cents per share and twelve years accrued interest. I had the customary notice before I bought that the stock would advance rapidly in price and if I invested without hesitation and without investigation I would have the benefit of the first and early advance. I hearkened to the alluring honey literature and sent a U. S. money order, something whose face value couldn’t be questioned. I wanted to be absolutely sure I’d get the stock. I got it all right. I have such faith in that stock that I can go anywhere and leave it behind unlocked doors and it never strays away.

A home boy succeeded in getting a patent on an improved table. He incorporated under the laws where Wilson was governor and then invited capital for manufacturing purposes. He styled his invention “The Great Western Improvement Company” and sold seventeen shares at the flat sum of $5.00. I learned a little from the crack at the Cracker Eagle and did not fly so high and only took the $5.00 worth. It’s comical now, to me, how the inventor and promoter explained how his table was superior to the common ordinary everyday table that’s been in use so long. It had a hollow holding receptacle in the center and he said after the meal had been stowed away and nothing was left but the dishes and flies, the housewife could, if she felt so disposed, elevate a handle and the soiled dishes would disappear and the table would have an inviting appearance. He said it was especially fine when conversation had been brisk and company or peddlers were seen coming; all that was necessary was the quick jerk of the ever-ready handle and down out of sight went the dishes, flies, napkins, and everything untidy and untasty. I was looking for votes when this investment was made and while the votes may not have had an equal value I let it go at that and put away the stock for my grandchildren. Another share of stock in the Campbells’ Farming Association at a cost of $5.00 brings my get rich quick investments to a finis. The only other stock I ever had was bank stock. I invested $1,500.00 in a State Bank in Nebraska. I didn’t lose on this deal but the money would have paid better on a straight five per cent rate.

Nothing would have done me more good and brought a keener satisfaction than to have had a nice remuneration from some investment that I have made. My wife called me what the bible says she shouldn’t so many times that it seems to look like I am really a bigger one than she said I was, and if I could have changed her mind by laying before her eyes a nice portly check for $5,000.00 or $10,000.00 it would have been such an agreeable surprise not only to her but to myself that we both would have enjoyed it, and especially myself if I could have pulled it over. But if hope don’t come again I will have to let that excellent pleasure be like Mathewson’s speedy one and fade away.

A lad of the average type at twenty-one has a great deal of stored up energy; he has the muscle bank and the brain bank from which to get his necessary resources, and a great many lads think Dad is a back number and he sees where the old gentleman was short on gray matter, and all advice is lost on this sort of boys. I was never conceited this way, in fact I think somebody else got nearly all the gall that should have been mine. If a fellow holds his own in these days, no matter what party is in power, Democratic or Republican, you need your full allowance of gall. The lad that thinks that the governor’s gray matter is not as profuse as it should be, but he, through some unknown force, grabbed all that was coming to him and part of dad’s might read the following verse and the conclusive portion of this chapter and apply it from a stand point of ordinary horse sense:

It makes the pain come home when you look back from fifty and realize that a man at twenty-one is a darn big fool, at thirty still a fool, at thirty-five a little foolish, and at forty he still has some, at forty-five wisdom breaks in gently, and at fifty he stands on the threshold of learning ready to apply and absorb, and at sixty he’s a valuable asset to his community and country.